


Interlude: Home is What You Make It

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Series: Vexation of Spirit [9]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Shadow Unit, The Lone Gunmen (TV)
Genre: Hypoglycemia, M/M, Rich Boyfriend Problems, Serious Relationship Conversations, gamma metabolism hijinks, nobody in this room is good at romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 14:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16766923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: Langly asked Byers to do something for him, weeks ago, before this mess with Susanne and Alcea turned into a mess. Byers finally came through. Reid's not taking it well -- there are some gifts, in his mind, that don't need to be given, things that upset the balance of a relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Earlgreyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Earlgreyer/gifts).



The three of them had taken to working out of Reid's apartment, small as it was, because the Bureau had nowhere to put their not-quite-a-case that was out of the way enough that someone who didn't need to know wasn't going to walk right into it. Chaz and Reid were technically still on call, in case things got weirder than anyone else wanted to deal with, but, for the most part, they'd been cut loose with instructions to admit to nothing. At least for a few weeks. Reid sat at his desk, papers piled on every flat surface around him, corkboards above the bookcases behind him. Every now and again, he'd reach back and make a note or pin another card. Langly lay on the couch with his laptop, the portable printer and a heap of dishes on the coffee table next to him, the stream of expletives a near constant soundtrack, interrupted by slurps of Jolt. Chaz occupied the table in the far corner, workspace a combination of the other two, with piles of paper pinned under his laptop and a bag of empty takeout boxes beside his chair.  
  
Langly cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably, the swearing dragged to a sudden halt.  
  
"What do you have?" Reid asked, not looking up.  
  
"Ah, slightly more personal." Langly cleared his throat again, voice rising in pitch as he went on. "Happy birthday. I bought your house."  
  
This time, Reid looked up, and the uncanny stillness of the gaze he turned on Langly could have cleared a room. "It's not my birthday, yet. It's not even your birthday. And I told you I didn't want or need a house."  
  
Chaz held the mirror close, assuming he'd need it to stop whatever was about to happen, here, mostly because he wasn't quite sure what it was. With as uncomfortable as Langly looked, this sounded like an accident of some sort. That wasn't smug, that wasn't even happy. That was _panicked_.  
  
Langly got up, laptop still in his hands, and carried it to Reid's desk. "You need to see this as I saw this. I didn't _buy you a house_. Byers owns this building." He paused, holding out the laptop so Reid could see, absolutely not mentioning that he'd asked Byers to do it and then forgotten he'd done it. "Which means I'm going to convince him to replace the glass in those goddamn windows, first. The panes aren't supposed to whistle when the wind blows."  
  
"Why does Byers want this building? What are you two planning to do with it?" And now, Reid just looked confused. This wasn't Langly trying to buy him something nice and doing so in the typically objectionable and ridiculous manner he so often did, this was Byers trying to make an investment. And Reid wasn't sure what to make of that.  
  
Langly shrugged. "Same thing we always do, I guess. Fix everything, lower the rent, move a few walls. Probably going to improve the integrity of my fake address by putting it here, instead of halfway cross town. Actually be able to take mail at it."  
  
Reid opened his mouth to say something, but Langly suddenly poured himself into the recliner beside the desk, laptop on the floor, head between his knees.  
  
"Hey, Villette? Call for pizza?" Langly's voice sounded weak and distant to his own ears. "I was fine, and then I got up."  
  
"Yeah, that's when it gets you," Chaz agreed, already on his feet and dodging the coffee table on his way into the kitchen. "Spencer? Pizza. You know what delivers here, and you know what he eats. Three everythings, for me, and whatever you're having."  
  
By the time Chaz crouched next to him, pressing a glass into his hand, Langly was staring dizzily at the edge of the rug between his feet, glasses hanging precariously from his face, trying to figure out the pattern in the threads, like it was the most important thing he'd ever been presented with.  
  
"Drink this." Chaz's other hand caught Langly's shoulder as he tried to sit up. "Nope, not yet. Just tip your head up and drink as much of that as you can."  
  
Langly got most of the glass down, before the angle got too awkward. "Tastes like sand. What the hell did I just drink?"  
  
"Sugar water. It'll keep you from dropping dead, until we get a pizza in you." Chaz nudged Langly's shoulder. "Here, sit up _slowly_. Lean back and let the chair support you. And drink the rest of that. I'll grab you a few of his granola bars, as soon as your eyes stop looking like someone dropped a slot machine down a flight of stairs, because I know you hate what I carry."  
  
Langly sprawled loosely in the chair, watching the city wireless flash across his eyes, as he tried to get the last of the water into his mouth instead of down the front of his shirt. He almost succeeded. "God damn it!"  
  
"You're gonna be all right," Chaz promised, before he caught the way Langly's eyes flicked, catching on things only Langly could see. "You're still jamming, aren't you?"  
  
"I'm in a really fucking awkward position, right now, and I can't get out. I can't do anything, because it's all fuzzy, and I'm smarter than that, but I also can't get back out, without fucking up and leaving trace." Langly pushed his glasses up. "You didn't think I actually _stopped_ to check my email, did you?"  
  
Chaz's eyes rounded almost comically, and he was on his feet in an instant, tripping over the coffee table twice, before he made it into the kitchen. "Langly, you are the second-best hacker I know, but you are a reckless fucking lunatic, and you'll starve if you don't stop that."  
  
"No I won't." Langly chuckled vacantly, eyes still watching the pretty swirls in the ambient data. "I'll get it right. I just have to fuck it up a couple times, first."  
  
"You just have to _survive_ fucking it up." The sound of running water and slamming cupboard doors went on for a bit, before Chaz went on, edging back out of the kitchen, with his hands full. "And this is going to be horrible, in about an hour, so you probably do want to start backing out as soon as you've got the wits to do it."  
  
"Migraine horrible?" Langly asked, taking the next glass of sugar water with both hands. This time, he'd get all of it in his mouth, he was sure.  
  
"Migraine horrible, with a side of full-body cramps. You're not going to die, you're just going to wish you had." Chaz picked up Langly's laptop and put it in his lap.  
  
"Look, if it doesn't involve throwing up in a body bag, in a moving vehicle, I'm probably fine."  
  
Chaz shot Reid a long-suffering look, and Reid returned it.  
  
"Just remember hypoglycaemia makes you extra stupid," Reid volunteered. "Pizza should be here in forty-five minutes. Think you can keep him alive that long?"  
  
"I'm reworking the probabilities, now that I'm resisting the urge to kill him, myself."  
  
"I'll take that as a yes," Reid decided, getting up to move himself to the closer arm of the chair. "Think you can avoid dying?" he asked Langly.  
  
"Pssh. I'm not gonna die. Even Chaz says I'm not gonna die."  
  
Chaz dropped a handful of granola bars onto the laptop, as he leaned over and grabbed Langly by both shoulders. "Listen to me, just because I survived it a few times, and much more seriously than this, doesn't mean you will. I was a lot younger, then, than you are now. This is how we die, people like us. We either go out with a bang, or we slowly starve. There is no point in accelerating that by starting the organ damage early. And on top of that? When I pull a long night? I'm pulling a long night of beta-level powers. It's gonna be five thousand calories, but that's all it's gonna be. Because there are things that are not for the long burn."  
  
"Which is why you keep doing them in bed," Langly shot back.  
  
"I know what it's going to cost! I'm really pretty good at that! That is--" Chaz laughed bitterly. "That's what I _do_. And 'in bed' is still only like... an hour or three. You've been going full-bore for like ten hours, Langly. You've been going long enough I forgot you didn't have it under control yet." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "And that's on me. I should've been watching you closer, but every time I looked up you were drinking Jolt. Which would've held you, if you were _me_. But, you're not, and it's going to take more to keep you going."  
  
"More fucking _sleep_ ," Langly muttered, suddenly pointing behind him. "Loud neighbours who are the problem are that side, right? I'm telling Byers not to renew their lease. Won't be the first time, with them." He blinked dizzily, head rolling to the side and then back, before he shoved the glass back at Chaz. "Okay, that epic gas station cup I walked in with yesterday? It has a _straw_. Get me something rot-your-teeth sweet with two scoops of peanut butter powder in it, and hold it for me, so my hands are free and I can avoid dropping dead, while I grab what I need and get out, before I _pass out_."  
  
"That's as close to serious as you're getting." Reid shrugged at Chaz.  
  
"Trying not to pass out from hypoglycaemia... I'll take what I can get." Chaz returned the shrug and returned to the kitchen. "Look, if you own this building, if Byers owns this building, can you please get Spencer a bigger kitchen? Something it's actually possible to cook real food in without slamming my elbows every time I move?"  
  
"I have lived here for more years than I care to think about, and that kitchen is a perfectly reasonable size," Reid protested, taking a granola bar out of Langly's hands and opening it for him, before putting it back.  
  
"Your kitchen is not a reasonable size. I'm spoilt, and I know it, but that is still not a reasonable size. That is a kitchen for midgets. It's too small for Frohike, okay. That is a model kitchen clearly designed to be used by _hamsters_ ," Langly complained, squinting at the screen and trying to remember what exactly he'd been doing, if he compared that to the pings and passwords against the backs of his eyes.  
  
"This is ridiculous. You are not renovating my apartment. I _live_ here. I _like it_ here." Reid folded his arms.  
  
Chaz came back holding a massive cup with a lid and a straw. "The two of you can have this argument after he has the brains to have it, which is not right now."  
  
"Bullshit!" Langly snapped, as Chaz crouched next to him, holding the cup steady. "I can--"  
  
"No, Langly, you can't. One thing at a time. Finish what you're doing. Drink this. Then have an argument with your boyfriend about whether it's completely rude to buy the building out from under him."  
  
"Out from under nobody," Langly huffed, licking the straw into his mouth, as he focused on the screen and started typing. "Nobody's getting thrown out except the assholes who play rave music at four in the morning, and they have to see it coming, because it's not the first and probably not the last time with them, and that's because _I_ want to be able to sleep."  
  
"He values his own ass. I just benefit from that," Reid drawled, catching Chaz's eye.  
  
"Remind me how the two of you got together?" Chaz's eyebrow crept up.  
  
"A series of bad decisions and once in a lifetime opportunities, combined with a serial killer and too much coffee." A small, private smile lifted one side of Reid's mouth, as he watched the reflections of the screen on Langly's glasses. "He's too much for me -- more than I know what to do with -- but I'm pretty sure that's me, not him." He met Chaz's eyes, again. "You know what I'm talking about. But, I love him. I could learn to live like this."  
  
"But, you couldn't learn to live somewhere a little larger?" Langly's keystrokes got sharper.  
  
"Consistency is important," Chaz argued. "I lived somewhere smaller than this. Bought the place you've seen. It still hurt to move."  
  
Langly's fingers curled, tucking up from the keys, until he forced them straight and started typing again. "I know you're right."


	2. Chapter 2

The argument picked up again, somewhere around Langly's third slice of pizza.  
  
"I'm not asking you to move! I offered that _once_. You made it real clear that was not the answer to the problem."  
  
"There's not a problem!" Reid insisted, out of sheer bloody-mindedness at this point. He knew this place was too small. It was a little tight when he'd moved into it. It was even smaller when he had to move his mother into it, making room for the bed in that back room that was already too small. And now, if he was honest, he really did need somewhere to put his own bed. A bed he had no doubt Langly would eventually just buy him, if he didn't get to it soon enough. And that was something he wasn't going to allow. It would be his bed, and he'd choose it himself. ... Assuming he could figure out where to put it.  
  
"You live in a shoebox. You don't even live; you subsist. And you're paying too much for this place, anyway -- and yes I know the city's in the middle of a housing crisis, and this is a very good price for a shoebox, right now, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be better. Which, I mean, that's what we do. We make things better. It's time to kick the system back into shape." Langly gestured with half a folded slice of pizza, suddenly sticking his other hand under it, when a glob of sausage and grease spilled out.  
  
Reid looked at Chaz, who shrugged eloquently. "Okay, fine. You own the building. Or Byers owns the building. Do you realise how awkward this is? I think at this point you could've proposed, and I'd feel a little less conflicted about it. What happens if this doesn't last, between us? What happens if I'm wrong, and it's not forever. I've _been_ wrong. I don't want to be wrong. I really, intensely dislike being wrong. But, what happens if I am?"  
  
"Then you have a really nice apartment at about three-quarters the market rate, and your new girlfriend wonders how you got so lucky." Langly shrugged and licked the grease off his palm. "I have better things to be vindictive about."  
  
"See, _I'm_ comfortable with that as an answer." Chaz pointed across the table at Langly. "It's not that you're not vindictive, it's that you're not a vindictive _ex_."  
  
"Why bother? I know what I'm like. Fifty years of decent and reasonable people haven't put up with my shit, why would they start now? It's not even personal." Langly laughed and tried to finish the slice, as he felt the headache start creeping up the base of his skull. "It's personal, if you _like_ me. It's common sense, if you throw me out on my ass."  
  
"It's a good thing none of us have any common sense, then, isn't it?" Chaz folded half a greasy slice of pizza into his mouth, and Reid started to doubt his own understanding of physics.  
  
Reid tried to settle himself with the idea. It was really too late to _do_ anything about it. Now the difficulty was just keeping Langly from doing anything more ridiculous. He changed the subject, very slightly. "Okay, so, you're getting rid of my neighbours, and then... moving in next door?"  
  
Langly shook his head, mouth full of pizza. "No, I'm getting rid of the shitty neighbours and then using that as my fake address, so I've got somewhere to send Frank's mail. It'll be a couple of months before all the paperwork goes through, and a couple more before we can get them out, but I was thinking about renovating that place. Take out the bedroom, expand the kitchen and bathroom, turn the main room into a very nice bedroom with space for all three of us. You know why we're spending so much time here. It's not just the case. It's that you're the only one of us who lives alone, so if we're gonna get some kind of loud, better here, where you don't even know your neighbours. And that place is the corner of the building, anyway. _You're_ the only neighbour."  
  
"Task force crash pad." Reid didn't sound impressed.  
  
"I was thinking more _your bedroom_ ," Langly admitted, dipping a pizza crust in his soda, as Chaz looked on in horror. " _You_ pick who gets to sleep there. But, it's bigger and with an actual bed. And then you're not sleeping in the room people visit you in, which is always a little weird. It's also not technically your address, so it's going to take the next serial nutjob with a gun a little longer to figure out where you sleep, which is always a bonus."  
  
"That was once. Ever," Reid protested, knowing that once had been more than enough, and if it had finally happened once, that made it more likely to happen again, and given the particular pathology, he wouldn't be surprised if Narcisse tried again, but used someone else to do it for her. Which meant it really wouldn't be about him, but he'd still end up dead.  
  
Chaz leaned his chair back, taking in the far side of the room. "Board up the outer door, but only on the inside, and put the only real entrance behind a bookcase, in here. Anybody comes through this door, and they're going to be very confused."  
  
"I thought you were on my side!" Reid shot Chaz a look of betrayal.  
  
"I'm on the side where none of us gets shot, you don't have to move, and I don't wake up feeling like I've been kicked in the ribs, every time I sleep here."  
  
"Okay, fine. The floor is not the best possible choice for sleeping, but if something's going to fit all of us, in here, that's it."  
  
"Says the guy who's been sleeping on a loveseat for fifteen years." Langly rolled his eyes and grabbed another slice.  
  
"What about the chair?" Chaz blinked at Reid.  
  
Reid tipped his head at Langly. "He bought the chair. The first-- Second?"  
  
"Assuming it counts as a sex act if you jizz all over yourself as an intended outcome, second."  
  
"Second time was in that chair."  
  
Chaz looked back and forth between them, and finally asked, when it wasn't forthcoming. "And the first was...?" He hoped the answer didn't involve the loveseat.  
  
"Bathroom wall." Langly took a large bite of pizza.  
  
" _His_ bathroom," Reid was quick to clarify, wondering how long it was going to take before he handed Chaz the memories of the _other_ bathroom.  
  
"Opportunity and bad decisions?" Chaz teased, reaching across the table to top off Langly's cup.  
  
"That's one of the best bad decisions I've ever made, and I've made some pretty good ones that looked like crap when I made them." Langly laughed, eyes down, so he wouldn't have to look at the evil twins. "Banging the fed was a terrible decision, at the time. That could've gone so wrong. But, I have no regrets. I have a negative number of regrets. And look where that got me. Now I'm banging _two_ feds. And speaking of which--" His eyes narrowed as he looked up at Chaz. "What's this bullshit about him being _my_ boyfriend? I'm pretty sure he's _our_ boyfriend."  
  
Chaz sat back and picked up a napkin, shoulders folding in as he wiped his hands. He shot a look at Reid and aborted a sentence before the first syllable. The look on Reid's face said he didn't have to explain, so he tried again, for Langly. "Spencer's _your_ boyfriend, Langly. And he has been since before I met the two of you."  
  
"I stick my dick in him, but you stick your brain in him. If that doesn't count toward 'boyfriend'..." Langly grabbed another slice of pizza and tried to cram half of it in his mouth.  
  
"It doesn't." A tiny smile crossed Reid's face, as he reached for another slice of his own pizza, tucked under the empty boxes and total chaos left from feeding the pair of gammas. "He's my evil twin."  
  
 _His shadow_ , Chaz thought, but that was the slot he'd written himself into.  
  
"You know, there's an awful lot of dick for the two of you to be sticking to the twins thing."  
  
"Where do you think the 'evil' part comes into it?" A pause, as Chaz watched Langly suffer through that punchline, and then he went back to the pizza.  
  
"Misdirection and a deep fear of paperwork," was Reid's slightly more measured response, the delivery slightly strained by the bite of pizza in his mouth and the laugh he was holding back. "Seriously, though, we're going to have to have a talk about you just... inserting money and influence into my life. I respect that you don't mean any harm, that you're not evil." He paused and tipped the slice in his hand at Chaz. "He's evil."  
  
"Hey, fuck you." Chaz threw the napkin at Reid.  
  
"Finish your pizza so you don't die trying." Reid's expression hadn't changed, as he went on. "But, you have to look at this from where I'm sitting. Statistically, the behaviour I'm seeing doesn't end well for the partner in my position."  
  
Chaz took a deep breath as the pieces dropped into place. "He's right. And that's just a hazard of the job that we know that. Thankfully, you don't really seem like the type, but that's ... sometimes that's a matter of circumstance. It's possessive, a lot of times. Crowding." And on some fundamental level, Chaz still envied it.  
  
"It's not you, it's the job." Reid watched Langly's hands pick apart a pizza crust. "I'll pull a couple of articles, and we can laugh about it, but it's _really_ unnerving. And the number of cases that have involved gifts... sometimes to my team. Sometimes people's body parts! Though I think that's a little outside the current frame. You've got two profilers and this is... a terrible intersection of the job and our personal life, but sometimes it goes like that. Sometimes you can't put it down _enough_."  
  
 _Sometimes you shouldn't_ , Chaz thought, but didn't say it. He really didn't think Langly was a threat, but he got exactly where Reid was coming from on that point.  
  
"Shit." Langly huffed and almost rubbed his face, before realising his hands were both greasy. "This is what you meant about the chair, too, isn't it?"  
  
"Okay, the chair was completely over the top. This-- The building seems like it just kind of happened that way, not really about me at all, but you're trying to get me a benefit from it, since it has happened. Give me a bit, and I'll ... I don't know. I'll get over it. But, the _chair_?" Reid turned a dry look on Chaz and pointed across himself at Langly. "Do you know what he did? We'd met _once_. And he looked up my address... and everything else about me, as it turns out ... and then he bought me a chair. An extremely expensive and very fancy chair. And a coffee maker to go with it."  
  
"On a scale of one to creepy, that's creepy," Chaz agreed. "I mean, I know you both, and it's kind of funny, but... I'd have probably called the office over that. _Nikki, halp, strange and attractive men are sending me furniture!_ "  
  
Reid managed to sublimate a laugh into a small snort.  
  
"What's with the everything else? That's the extra creepy part, not that... I have ... any business saying that to you..." Chaz squeezed his eyes shut and cleared his throat, mouth twisting in that particularly unflattering way that suggested he'd done something he really shouldn't have.  
  
"Paranoia. It's served me well." Langly winged an end of the pizza crust at Chaz. "And you're right. You don't have any business saying that to me. At least I confined myself to the internet and a wide variety of things connected to it. You want to talk _creepy_..."  
  
"And I've never done it to you again," Chaz replied. "And it was, as I've said before, rude as hell."  
  
"And I've never done it to him, again, either. Because I got it all the first time."  
  
"I didn't. And that was intentional."  
  
The two gammas stared at each other across the table, and Reid had some serious concerns for a few moments, before he realised what they reminded him of. And he shouldn't laugh. He was so sure of that. But, he did it anyway, and then all the eyes were on him.  
  
The smile that followed was nervous and regretful, as Reid considered his options and went with what had struck him as so funny. "Starved dog and angry cat." He paused. "And you both know more about me than anyone should."  
  
Chaz snorted. "You've thought that before."  
  
Reid had the decency to look embarrassed. "Anyway, before this turned into a slapfight about whose intrusive datamining was more intrusive..."  
  
"Okay, so, the problem's simple, right? I want to give you cool shit that makes life more enjoyable. But, I want to do that on a global scale anyway. Except when people are assholes and get by on making sure nobody else has cool shit. And you flip out because statistically people who give other people lots of cool shit are serial killers or something. So, we just have to find a way to make it not set off the serial killer alarms, right? Sounds simple."  
  
"Try asking, first," Chaz suggested, quietly.  
  
"But, then it's not a surprise!"  
  
"Have I mentioned recently how much I hate surprises?" Reid cleared his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. "I promise. I'm not just _pretending_ to be boring."  
  
"Yes, you are," Chaz corrected, offering a lopsided grin. "But, so am I."  
  
" _You're_ actually the exciting one of us. You jump off cliffs." Reid opened one eye to look at Chaz, and then picked up a napkin and handed it to Langly. "Seriously, Langly, talk to me first. Listen to me, when I tell you not to do something for me. Make the offer. Let me think about it, first. I don't make decisions quickly, when I'm not in the field."  
  
Langly held up a finger. "I reserve the right to surprise you with one gift, in a year. For your birthday. And to take a picture for your mother."  
  
"With an absolute upper limit of five hundred dollars, and an agreement that I don't have to be smiling."  
  
"How the hell is five hundred dollars a _limit_?" The words fell out of Chaz's mouth before the rest of the context fell back into place. This was the guy who had gotten them a private jet to Florida, overnight.  
  
"He threatened to buy me a house!"  
  
"I offered!" Langly protested.  
  
Chaz just shook his head, re-evaluating, once again, how much money was at Langly's disposal, and what that might mean they could get away with, on this case, if they weren't dependent on the Bureau to provide funding for exploratory jaunts.  
  
" _Anyway_ ," Reid said, again.  
  
"Terms and conditions accepted." Langly wiped the grease off his fingers. "And _tell me_ if you need something."  
  
"I'm still holding out for the bed," Chaz whispered loudly.  
  
"I don't need a--" Reid sighed. "Fine. I probably need a bed. But, I get to pick it."  
  
"We'll talk about it after the neighbours move out." Langly waved a hand dismissively. "I should figure out what the hell I grabbed and do something with that. We've got some asses to kick."


End file.
